Embedded within the vision of post-secondary institutions across British Columbia are the values of contributing to knowledge across disciplines and sharing the results of research with the local and global communities.

Spurred by the need to make higher education accessible to all, the open movement has gained ground as the Internet evolved to enable easy sharing of different forms of media. However, while the notion of "open" in higher education has been growing in British Columbia, the default scholarly approach is still closed.

It is time for the scholarly conversation to shift from "why open", to "why not open"? This event will feature discussion about collaboration within the open movement and role of openness in higher education in British Columbia and examine:

if and why BC's universities and colleges should embrace open practices

what impact open access and the reuse of educational materials would have on the cost and efficacy of higher education

what role the governments of Canada and British Columbia should play in opening higher education

Library shelves are increasingly full, and print books are still being acquired. Yet surprisingly few are being used. In 2011, a study of OhioLINK’s 88 libraries and 30 million monograph volumes showed that 6% of those books accounted for 80% of circulations. In October 2010, Cornell reported that 55% of its books had not circulated since 1990. Meanwhile, library administrators seek to expand space for group study, information commons, and writing centers. Much of the available space is currently occupied by low-use print collections, stored and maintained at an estimated annual cost of $4.26 per volume in open stacks, $.86 per volume in high-density storage. For these reasons, print collections face increased scrutiny.

The intent of the session was to explore why rethinking print collections is a reasonable idea at this time, and how management of print collections might be adapted while assuring archival security and continued access for users.